If the true purpose of the University is to put people on a journey of pursuing knowledge rather than purely professional development, then I think that an educational system that truly believes this would be radically different than the educational system we find ourselves participating in.

For one thing, technical colleges and trade schools would be much more important because there are people who want to learn how to do a specific job and have a specific career. I concentrated in accounting in my undergraduate. I feel like that would belong in this type of trade specific training. Of course there are people who want to study the theory of accounting, but most people, myself included, want to learn about accounting so that we could become accountants. I even think that training to be a doctor could fall under this trade specific training program. Schools that teach these types of technical skills for people who want a specific career would be vitally important in this system.

The University than would be focused on the further development of knowledge. This is naturally practical, but it is practical in a different way than it is for people who need to learn how to perform surgery. At the University, innovation is vital. It is not so much learning how to perform surgery in the way that it is done now, but it is thinking about how to perform surgery better.

Of course, this might be best done by people who have already performed surgery, so I do not mean that there is a hard and fast separation between these two, but I am suggesting that students need to decide what they actually want out of their education.

Are they in this for the actual pursuit of knowledge itself, or are they in this for learning how to perform a particular skill? Both of them are important, and we need them both in society, but obviously this is a redefinition of how we understand the University.

Right now, the conventional wisdom is that everyone must go to University in order to get a job. Notice that in the proposed system, that is certainly not the case. If people are interested in truly developing knowledge and pressure on to new and innovative things, there is an option for that. There is also an option for people who want to learn a trade and do it well. Both are valuable, but there is a difference between professional training and the University.

This would also satisfy Kuyper who was frustrated that the ultimate purpose of the University was being twisted by people who simply wanted professional training. For people who want just to learn the skills, there is a way to do that that would be important and necessary in our society. However, if there are people who genuinely want to strive in this community of pursuing knowledge, there would be a pathway for them as well.

I write this as someone who has been on both sides of this equation. Like I said, my undergraduate was extraordinarily practical, and I intended it to be practical. I was a business major because I knew I could get a job with that degree. Given my personality, I was also interested in pursuing knowledge, but my motives were very much more aligned with finding a career and developing those professional skills.

Now, I am pursuing a PhD in humanities, and I would love to have that be my career at some point. I would love to be a professor and teach about Great Books. However, I did not decide to get my degree for that purpose. I like to learn about the Western Canon, and I like to think about the ideas that have been debated over and over in our great intellectual tradition. I already have a career, but I continue to learn because I love to learn and I want to learn more.

There’s a lot more to be said about this system however because there are other parts of college beyond simply professional training even for people who go to college with the intention of developing professional skills. Those skills would need to be cultivated differently than the rest of our education system. I guess that will be something for next week.

The University is a wonderful thing, but as we saw on Monday, there are many students were not prepared for the rigors of academic life that accompanies this level of education. Consequently, the students become overwhelmed when they realize that perhaps they are not as prepared as they ought to be.

Abraham Kuyper is about the closest thing to a true renaissance man you are ever going to find. Not only was he an eminent theologian, but he was also a statesman and university president. He had his hand in just about everything in the Netherlands, and as a university president, he was charged with speaking to his students before each academic year. I recently read two of these addresses, and I think they tie into the issue we were talking about on Monday about being appropriately prepared for the University.

He spoke about how higher education began with a particular motive.

“A university was a universitas docentium et discentium, a community of teachers and learners united in a single corporate body.”[1]

This is what we would ideally like to believe the University still remains. The University ought to be a type of place where teachers and students come together as a single unit to continue pursuing knowledge. It was a journey that people went on for the love of knowledge.

Kuyper, even over 100 years ago, saw that this mission was being perverted by people with ulterior motives.

“Young men whose object was not the study itself nevertheless coveted the privileges attached to the order of the learned and began to penetrate our sacred garden like veritable parasites.”[2]

Rather than pursuing knowledge regardless of the honor it brought with it, people began to look towards the University as a type of hierarchy.

The University became seen a bestower of privilege rather than a community of individuals pursuing knowledge out of a passion for knowledge itself.

This is where that pressure I spoke about on Monday comes from. These students believe that they have to be perfect, and they have to graduate from a top-tier university because in order to have a wide variety of privileges in our current society, you need to have a university degree.

I am not blaming the students for going to college or trying to attend the best universities. I am still attending college, and I probably always will to be quite frank with you. I am not trying to sound anti-intellectual or demean the value of college whatsoever.

Rather, I am lamenting the transition of the focus of the University. I am sure that so many people feel pressured to go to college to earn a piece of paper because they simply need it for professional purposes. That is not what that University is supposed to be about. The University is supposed to be a place where people go because they want to learn. Practical matters such as job placement really ought to be secondary in reality.

Don’t get me wrong. I specifically studied business administration as an undergraduate because it was practical. I knew I would be able to find a job with that degree. I understand how our system works, and I understand that if you want to get a good job, you have to choose the right course of study.

However, I would simply reiterate my point that it is a shame that the system is currently that way. For many people, they might not enjoy the process of learning as much as I do. I did love to learn about business, and right now, I love to learn about humanities. I love the process of learning, and I love the pursuit of knowledge.

I would have wanted to attend college regardless of the additional privileges bestows because I love the process of learning in and of itself. However, this pressure is perhaps the reason that so many people have such a hard time with failure. There is a perception and perhaps reality that the only way to get any type of job of value is to go to college, and that causes the problem that Kuyper is alluding to. You end up with colleges full of people who don’t really want to be there for the true pursuit of knowledge but rather chasing a credential.

It may be a useful way to train professionals, but it clearly has deviated away from the ultimate purpose of the University.

When I was young, I was incredibly interested in the Civil War. To be honest, it is still my favorite war to study because there were so many interesting personalities on both sides of the conflict and a variety of motives that add a level of depth to this conflict that goes far beyond the battlefield. Of course, almost every war has those layers of interest, but the Civil War has always stood out to me as one that I sincerely enjoy learning more about.

However, even as a young child, it was obvious to me because of my interest in this conflict that setbacks are part of any conflict, but it does not determine how you finish.

The Union suffered from dreadful command in the first half of the war. Even though they were largely fighting the war in Confederate territory and had much better equipment and supplies for many conflicts, they could not seem to win the day because the leadership failed time and time again.

To the contrary, the Confederate Army, behind the leadership of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson among others, consistently outmaneuvered the Union and dealt blow after blow to their powerful adversary. Really, until Gettysburg, and one of Lee’s worst tactical decisions, the Confederacy did not suffer any heavy defeats.

The tide began to turn however as Ulysses S. Grant took command of the Union Army. The conflict continued and pushed the Confederacy further and further south. Eventually, this of course led to the Confederate surrender and the Union victory.

Obviously this is a very broad brush picture of the Civil War, but it is important to remember that even though there were plenty of setbacks for the Union in the first half of the war, they eventually found a way to be successful. They eventually found the right general to lead the army using basically a sledgehammer strategy to continually pound the Confederate Army into surrender as the South could not sustain very many heavy losses.

The North understood that failure was not necessarily fatal, but President Abraham Lincoln was also not content to allow ineffective generals in command as evidenced by the rotating door before Grant. Setbacks and failures happen, but you have to make corrections and move on because failure does not have to be the end of the story. Once you figure out how to make it work, you can still have the ultimate victory in the end.

I mention this story because of a recent article in the New York Times entitled, “On Campus, Failure Is on the Syllabus,” by Jessica Bennett. Bennett highlights the fact that many college students simply do not understand how to deal with failure. Bennett quotes Rachel Simmons, a leadership development specialist at Smith College who said, “We’re talking about students showing up in residential life offices distraught and inconsolable when they score less than an A-minus. Ending up in the counseling center after being rejected from a club. Students who are unable to ask for help when they need it, or so fearful of failing that they will avoid taking risks at all.”

Part of the lesson from what I see here is that perhaps more young people should learn about the Civil War, but the lesson is obviously more broadly applicable than that.

We’re raising a generation of young people who literally do not understand that they are not always going to be perfect. For some reason, it is not acceptable to be just satisfactory; people want to be perfect. Naturally, our high schools are reinforcing that perspective as a recent article in USA Today by Greg Toppo points out. “Recent findings show that the proportion of high school seniors graduating with an A average — that includes an A-minus or A-plus — has grown sharply over the past generation, even as average SAT scores have fallen. In 1998, it was 38.9%. By last year, it had grown to 47%.”

If you continue propping up the perception that everyone is virtually as good as they can be in regards to academics, they are going to have a hard time when reality hits and they simply cannot handle the level of work that is demanded by highly competitive colleges such as Smith as mentioned by the New York Times.

I totally understand that we don’t want anyone to feel bad about themselves and self-esteem is of course a fragile thing. However, part of me thinks that high school ought to be the time when these realities begin to set in. If these realities are starting to hit during college, that is a difficult transitional time for many people. For most, it is the first time living away from home and they have probably parted ways with most of their longtime friends to come to a particular university.

With so many changes, it is hard to run into another very difficult reality that you might not be as brilliant as you thought you were. In high school, at least you still have some type of support built-in for many people who are still in their own communities with family and friends. Having the social connections helps to reinforce that sense of value even if you find that academics are a little bit more challenging.

This is a tough topics for so many people as evidenced by the New York Times article, but we need to keep in mind the lesson we can indeed learn from the Civil War. Some things are not going to work out. You are going to meet failure at some point in something. However, that doesn’t mean that you are going to fail at everything, and you need to find the way to make it work. I am convinced that everybody is good at something, and it is just a matter of finding that Ulysses S Grant strategy if you want to ultimately come to your final point of success.

All week I have been talking about an excellent article written on the Huffington Post by Michael Zimmerman entitled, “The Evergreen State College Implosion: Are There Lessons To Be Learned?” On Monday, we talked about the value of being willing to listen. On Wednesday, we discussed the value of speaking out. Today, we need to take a step back and evaluate the culture that was created at this college campus. After all, these types of ridiculous events did not happen everywhere. They happen in specific places where it is possible that they can happen.

Most of us have heard about the protests that took place on this campus as a result of the controversy around what was called a Day of Absence. Traditionally, this had been a protest where students of color did not show up to the college on a particular day. This was supposed to symbolize how much the college would be lacking if these students were not there and therefore encourage appreciation of students of color. There was recently a similar protest regarding a day without women here in the United States. This type of protest is really nothing new. In the past, students decided that they wanted to protest, and they found in nonviolent means to do it. I see nothing wrong with that.

This year however at Evergreen State College, the theme was going to be different according to what was reported at Inside Higher Ed.

“But this year, organizers said that on the Day of Absence, they wanted white people to stay off campus.”

Obviously, this is much different. It is one thing to make a decision to leave campus on your own as a form of your own individual protest. It is another to tell someone else they cannot show up at all. Certainly, if white individuals wanted to support this and not come to campus, they had every right to do that, and I’m sure that many did stay away as a show of solidarity. However, the vital point to remember is that these individuals would again be making the choice to stay away. Telling people they cannot be on campus is a sign of segregation, and that is an evil that we have only far too recently tried to fight against in the United States of America.

Weinstein himself was specifically advised by campus police to remain off of campus when the protests ultimately came to be because he had become a rather controversial figure on campus based on his questioning of the Day of Absence. They said that they could not guarantee his safety.

On the same day however, Weinstein’s wife Heather Heying, who was also a faculty member at the college, did not feel that her husband was being treated equitably according to Zimmerman’s report.

“After Professor Weinstein was warned by Evergreen’s police chief to stay away from campus because his safety couldn’t be guaranteed, and after administrators were held hostage in their offices by a student group, the interim provost wrote a note saying that if anyone felt unsafe, they should come and speak with him or one of the deans. Professor Heying thought this note was both insensitive and disingenuous since obviously her husband was unsafe in the eyes of the police chief and he was advised against setting foot on campus. The faculty member responded to this note by posting this on Facebook: ‘Oh lord, Could some white women at Evergreen come and collect Heather Heying’s racist ***.’”

The same faculty member who posted this on Facebook was the one referred to on Monday who first brought charges of racism against Weinstein.

Clearly, there is some type of disconnect here, and it is one that Heying rightfully points out. It was inconsistent that her husband could not be guaranteed safety, but the official documents from the administration guaranteed safety for all individuals.

This type of doublespeak is indicative of a college climate that is in a very precarious position.

Soon after the events that took place, the Board of Trustees put out a statement according to the Washington Post. Part of it is particularly interesting.

“Intellectual inquiry, freedom of expression, tolerance and inclusiveness are core tenets of Evergreen’s philosophy and approach to education. Anyone who prevents Evergreen from delivering a positive and productive learning environment for all students has, and will continue to be held accountable for their actions and face appropriate consequences.”

Again, we see the inconsistency. The trustees talk about tolerance and inclusiveness, but this all started because one individual professor wanted to make suggestions to a diversity proposal in a way that he thought would make things better on his campus. Maybe he was right and maybe he was wrong, but no one ever heard about his proposals because he was silenced. His freedom of expression was denied by those who wanted to force a particular agenda.

The trustees went on to say more however.

“Evergreen is not alone in colleges currently experiencing conflict, but because of our long-standing commitment to open and respectful debate it is imperative that the campus dialogue reflects these values.”

If they were committed to open and respectful debate, they would have allowed these ideas to be talked about in the first place and spoken up to support a faculty member who was being forcibly silenced.

I don’t work on a college campus, and most of you probably don’t either. However, let’s hope that we can be better than this wherever we are. We don’t have to settle for this type of doublespeak that pretends to be about tolerance and inclusivity but is really a cover for physical violence.

I think that the better option for you and for me is to address the real problems that we have.

We can listen to each other as I suggested on Monday.

Then, we are actually prepared to talk about things that are wrong as I pointed out on Wednesday.

Once those two things are in place, we’re having dialogues, and we have the type of climate that the Board of Trustees at Evergreen State College apparently aspires to but utterly failed at creating.

Maybe working together, you and I will not fail in this endeavor. Maybe we will have the type of culture where these types of ridiculous debacles do not happen.

Michael Zimmerman wrote a fantastic article on the Huffington Post entitled, “The Evergreen State College Implosion: Are There Lessons To Be Learned?” He suggests that there were several problems that happened at this conflict-plagued campus, and I am not disagreeing with him at all. However, I am taking this week to suggest a few other lessons that we can learn from this utterly ridiculous situation. I suggested on Monday that we need to be willing to listen first and foremost.

Today, I would like to focus on the importance of speech after listening first. I write this blog publicly, and I am sharing my mind with you. You might agree, and you might not agree. At the very least though, you know how I feel about a particular issue.

On Monday, I pointed out how Prof. Bret Weinstein was denied the ability to speak at a faculty meeting because he was a racist as determined by the people who wanted to stop him from speaking and potentially dismantling their plan. Therefore, they called him a racist.

Not everyone on campus felt that this was appropriate treatment of Prof. Weinstein however according to Zimmerman’s report.

“Neither the president nor the interim provost interceded to make it clear that leveling such charges against a fellow faculty member was unacceptable within the college community. When Professor Weinstein spoke privately with both of those administrators about these incidents, they both acknowledged the inappropriateness of the behavior but each said that it was the responsibility of the other to do something about it. Neither administrator took any public action in response.”

Beyond this, there are other faculty members on campus who are willing to support him in private emails but would not speak publicly.

“Although Professor Weinstein had a fair number of colleagues supporting him behind the scenes, his was the main voice heard on campus.”

In Christianity, we talk a lot about that in your light shine. Some people might see this as a cliché, but the basic fact of the matter is that if you are professing to be a Christian, people ought to notice that. Christianity was not meant to be something that you are embarrassed to talk about or don’t want anyone to find out about.

I think that a similar approach applies to most thoughts that we have. Of course there are some things that probably ought not be said, but in a position of campus leadership, if you disagree with what is going on at the college you are in charge of, you have a responsibility to speak out and make your thoughts known.

If these two administrators felt that it was inappropriate to not allow Weinstein the opportunity to share his comments on the proposed plan put forward by the Equity Council, then they should have had the courage to speak out. That is what leadership is. Leaders need to take responsibility for what they have been charged with leading.

Even the other faculty members, although they were not in formal leadership positions, had the opportunity to come out and all the support Weinstein. Obviously there were consequences to Weinstein’s speech that we will talk about more on Friday, and some of the other faculty members might have been afraid of dealing with those.

However, this is something I am trying to implement in my own life, and I think it is important for all of us. We need to learn how to speak up in public and own what we believe. It is easy to agree or disagree with someone in our own minds and never let them know we even disagree with them. However, that is not going to make any type of positive change. We need to listen first and be willing to speak second.

If we really believe that something is wrong, we have to be willing to speak out in public especially if we are in leadership but even if we are not. Hiding in the shadows does not make anything better.

Want to Leave a Comment?

I don't allow comments on my website, and you might not feel comfortable emailing me, so I have another anonymous option if you have something you want to say. I won't be able to respond to you obviously, but at least if you have something you want to tell me anonymously, you can do so. Constructive criticism is welcome.

Exploring the Reason for the Hope That We Have

Be sure to check out my debut eBook Contending for the Christian Worldview: 30 Days of Reflections on Faith, Culture and Apologetics on Amazon or Smashwords.

Take a 30 day journey through the Bible and reflect on what it means to be a Christian in modern society. This devotional will encourage you to consider the reason for the hope that we have in Jesus Christ.